How Artificial Intelligence Will Change The Insurance Industry with Jim Carter

Hey.

Hey.

Welcome back to the Broker's Voice. I am excited today because I'm going outside the insurance industry. Normally I have advisors, industry partners on the show to talk about a product, a strategy or just let to get to know them. But today we're going outside the industry with a close friend of mine. I am joined by no other than Jim Carter. Jim, welcome to the Broker's Voice.

Thanks for having me, brother. Glad to be here, Andy.

People might be wondering, okay, Andy, why do you got your buddy on the call today on the show? So the reason I wanted to have you on, Jim, is, you know, you and I have been doing accountability calls for what, three years now?

Two years, Three and a half.

We haven't been. We, we. I know we don't connect every week, but man, we have been consistent for.

Two and a half years. Really hard too, though. Yeah, that's, that's the commitment.

And I have seen your evolution of your business evolve over the last couple years. And today you are the founder, co founder of Carter and Custer. You also run the FAST Foundation's Mastermind, which you and I originally met in. So you and you and RT Custer bought that out from mentors of ours, Chris and Laurie. And so you guys run the FAST Foundations mastermind to help entrepreneurs grow their business. But today we're going to talk about one of your areas of expertise. And I, I use the word expertise in an interesting way because this concept is so new for everybody. And that is artificial intelligence.

That's it. It's an evolving expertise. We're all rapidly figuring it out.

It's kind of like when the Affordable Care act rolled out in our industry in 2010 and you had people calling themselves experts within like months. It's like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, we're all figuring this thing out.

Did they even publish the whole thing yet?

I feel like that's where we are with this.

But I'm going to call you an expert because you know a hell of a lot more about it than almost everybody in our industry. And I wanted to take it.

That's why I'm here.

I wanted to have you on because artificial intelligence is here. It is here to stay. And it's impacting every industry, including insurance. And it's only going to get more impactful. But let's start today's episode with kind of just the basics for the folks, the advisors listening in who really haven't taken a lot of time to study or learn about this. What is artificial intelligence?

It's really what you want it to be. And I think that's why it's so hard for us to comprehend it because it's different than Google and it's something that continually evolves. So it's a wealth of knowledge in a form and a way that we can make sense of the data, we can feed it new data and we can almost get the data out in an unlimited amount of ways. And that's why the concept is really hard to grab. But we don't have to overthink it. So when I, when I'm asked this question, how do you explain artificial intelligence simply non technically like I'm five, you know, like put in whatever that is, it's a way of working with a piece of technology to receive or to interpolate or to, to get some form of your data or information out in a new and creative way but at an exponentially, an exponentially evolving rate. So it could be as simple as asking a question and getting an answer, but it not being in a list like a Google search. It could also say really simply taking some audio file and translating it over to a different language but doing it by way of artificial, intelligently processing it if you will. It can also be putting a ton of data into an open ended database. And These are considered LLMs, large language models. You may have heard that term kind of starting to float around a little bit and asking it to repeat back information to you in different forms. Again very different than how we traditionally now know to go to Google, search for something, get a list of 10 things and be riddled by ads. And while you're at it, book this flight and then see this thing and then we get lost. Right. This is a, it's a, it's a different way of working with the information that we either already have our own information that we're going to feed into it or amalgamation of other different types of information. So that's why I'm here is to try to break this down with you and we can, we can really explore it and then we can niche in and we can really talk about what it is that your audience wants to learn about it to find opportunities.

Absolutely. Because I think the insurance industry tends to have this opinion that we're sheltered from a lot of the impacts things are having on society. You know, I know back in 2008 I think we felt we were a little recession proof and I. Because everybody has to have insurance, right. Especially health insurance. And I think we're even seeing that impact us now. This current recession I think is really starting to hit everybody, even the insurance industry. And AI is going to be no different. Right. It's, it's, we, we being the insurance industry are not sheltered from the impacts artificial intelligence are going to have on business.

Absolutely. And, and the, the most important thing there is that because it's evolving there, there is no one, okay, I fit into this model, therefore I either am affected or I'm in affected. I mean some of the, some of the biggest impacted jobs that are, they're being prophesied and thought about and predicted are high wage earners, writing programming, people who process different information, jobs that require college degrees or higher or even just routine and repetitive work. So, so if you just, if you feel like you could fit into one of those buckets, and that's a lot of buckets and they're also very open ended by design. It's because we're all finding ways that it either can add value or it can detract value. And my, my, my goal and what I'm really trying to do here is to find ways where we don't have to fear this. We actually can embrace it and we can work with it to give us the competitive and the unfair advantage because if we lean into it sooner than stray away from it, it can give us untold benefits to what we're currently doing or maybe what we're going to be doing next.

Well, the way you described it as an amalgamation of, of thoughts or input, I thought was so well said because if you think about Google, right, you type in a search or you type in a phrase, it kind of spits back based on the, whatever you typed in. But I've used chat GPT for certain things and it's almost like you type in something but then it has a brain of its own. And you know, I was listening to a podcast where they were talking. There's a difference. You will get a different answer with artificial intelligence if you type in give me a recipe for, you know, this dish versus give me a recipe for this dish as if I am a chef. You know, it's almost like it just, it, it completes a, it creates a completely different mindset based on the input, which I find fascinating. And I think one of the biggest benefits to the point you are making about the exponential effect is time. The most valuable resource we all have is time. And when we don't have a lot of it, we've got to leverage tools to maximize our time. And I think AI can help us do this. Now before we get there, I'd love your thoughts on this because a lot of people have the opinion the benefit is time. There's, that's one benefit. But a lot of people think AI has this negative connotation, this scary thought, as if AI is going to take over the world. What are your thoughts about that?

Well, anything's possible, but I think we are not close to that from waking up tomorrow and realizing the robots have taken over. It's going to take a little bit more work before it gets there. And honestly, timeliness of all of this. So right now it's early May when we're recording this. Just last week, celebrity Ashton Kutcher just announced and started to go public that he personally started to put together a fund of almost a quarter billion dollars to, to help further not just the research, but also the, the, the oversight of this and making sure that we're doing this in a sustainable way that actually can add more value than detract. For example, about a month ago there was a massive open letter that was published and thousands of CEOs started signing it, basically saying, we don't want you to pause AI or we don't want you to stop AI development. Excuse me, we want you to pause it. We want to do this right. And now kind of moving all around because this is all going so fast. Even last week, who's the guy who's considered the grandfather of artificial intelligence, who used to be working at Google, recently just resigned because he's afraid that it could get unwieldy if we don't pay attention to it. He was willing to take that big of a stance. And this is all new, this is all breaking, this is all, this is all changing. So do I want you to quit everything and become a survival listing? Just go into the woods and like crawl into a hole? Well, unless you honestly want to. And it should have nothing to do with AI. But what I, what I want people to do is I want them to be open to saying, okay, this is powerful. This is likely the single biggest gift to humanity in the form of technology since the personal computer. So are we paying attention to it yet or are we acting like it's fear mongering and it's going to destroy us all? Like, let's be adults and let's really think about how can we just find ways to use this into our life and roll with it. And that's where I think the mindset shift has to occur. Because as long as we're straying away from it, we are letting everybody else outpace us. Who is willing to jump in on it.

Yeah, no, I, A phrase I, I often hear from Gary Vee popped in my head when you said that, you know, whenever a new technology comes out, those that come in early usually have the largest land grab. Right. And I think we're at that phase with AI as well as the companies, the advisors in our industry that leverage it, the best are going to have the biggest land grab early on. And I think there's. To your point, there's a very positive opportunity here if we use it the right way. So let's, let's dive into that. Here's what I want to do with today's discussion. You don't come from the insurance industry. Right. But you can definitely teach us how.

I often have you explain back to me exactly what it is that you do, even after these three years.

We did it prior to the show.

We did. I was like, you just re. Explain again. Exactly. Yeah, that, that's, that's my level of comprehension when.

What's so funny about that, Jim, is when people hear the word insurance, because I get this all the time from outside people, outside contractors that work with us, they immediately think life insurance when the reality is there's so many other types of insurance. Right. But what we're going to do kind.

Of does come top of mind now that you think of it first, but.

It'S probably because it's one of the things everybody has to buy or should buy, depend, regardless of what industry you're in. Right. But what we're going to do today is I'm going to talk about some concepts in our industry where I see AI being very applicable, and I would love your thoughts and how we can apply AI positively, effectively to impact that area of business. And I'm going to start with what I know best.